Every human body is an odor signature,
accordingto Chicago scientist B. K.
Krotoszynski (facingpage), who helped
develop this glass chamber for analyzing
the hundreds of body-odor constituents
that profile sex, race, nutrition,and
illness. Dr. Lewis Goldfrank (above, at
left), chief of Emergency Medicine at
New York City's Bellevue Hospital, trains
his staff to recognize promptly the odors
of poisons and diseases that might roll in
on the next stretcher-areminder that
smell can be a matterof life and death.
and made inquiries. "They are Hindus," he
said. "They don't use any colognes or per
fumes. They are very clean, and soap is how
they perfume themselves. They like nice
woody, floral fragrances. Soaps in the lower
end of the European market don't smell
nearly this lovely."
THE BIGGEST USERS of fragrance
are companies like Procter and
Gamble, Lever Brothers, and Col
gate. One brand of soap uses more than two
million pounds of fragrance each year. If the
fragrance is bought from IFF, the formula
remains locked in IFF's vault, and the fra
grance rolls out in 55-gallon drums. "We put
360
fragrances in shampoo to make life more
pleasant," Gus said. "Your hair would wash
just as well without a fragrance, but with it
you sing in the shower."
Soap companies first used fragrances to
mask the offensive base ingredients, later to
make soap smell nice. "Eventually, fra
grance becomes what the product stands
for,"
one company executive told me.
"Whether you use Downy fabric softener,
Final Touch, or Snuggle, if you follow
directions the result will be about the same.
To the housewife the final test is largely how
her clothes smell. It's what says to her, 'This
product is working.' Fragrance is the stron
gest drive in consumer soap preferences.
Among all the attributes, I would probably
rank performance at the bottom."
Gus and I walked to a nearby market. He
is an enthusiastic smeller. He picked up a
pack of toilet paper, poked a small hole in
the cellophane, squeezed it, and sniffed.
"'Unscented,'
it says. Means it is scented.
Almost everything is perfumed." He lifted a
sack of cat litter to his nose. "Yessir, this has
a fragrance. It smells of anise. Cats like it."
A window cleaner: "Hmm, lemon-scented
ammonia. That's interesting. Every mar
keter is trying to break that tradition of lem
on oil as a cleaner." He screwed off the cap of
a fabric softener. "These are beautiful fra
grances. See, it's soft smelling. The market
ing people know that the housewife who has
to decide which one is softer will smell the
softness, and we have to support them with
a fragrance that smells softer."
A woman pushed a shopping cart past us.
Gus turned and asked her, "Is that Ombre
Rose?" She was slightly startled, but flat
tered to be noticed. "Why no," she said, "I
don't have anything on. I just took a shower.
Oh, well yes, I did put on some hand cream.
What did you say it was?"
"Ombre Rose."
"No, that's not the brand."
"Yes, but it is the same type of fragrance."
Later Gus said, "She wasn't even aware
she had put on a fragrance, but I'll bet that
she used four or five products with a fra
grance in them this morning-a soap, sham
poo, makeup, hand lotion."
We headed back to Gus's office. "Just as
you walk with your eyes open," he said, "you
should walk with your nose open."
[
NationalGeographic,September 1986